Does Federal Dominance in Intergovernmental Institutions Matter? A Comparison of Eight Federal States

Policy interdependences create an important challenge for federal states: how to coordinate policies while mitigating possible conflicts. In many countries, this is done through intergovernmental institutions, such as councils, forums or even agencies. These venues provide the means for constituent units to both form a common front against the federal and coordinate and harmonize policies. However, little research focused on these councils and the way they are structured. Does the way they are organized have an effect on their efficiency? To be precise, if the federal government is the permanent chair of a forum, does this facilitate or limit compromises? Drawing upon comparative federalism literature, this work explores whether federal dominance over intergovernmental councils influences their capacity to engage in policy coordination. The study relies on an original dataset of 247 intergovernmental forums based in eight federations: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States. To assess the impact of federal presence on coordination, we conduct hierarchical Bayesian analysis.